Womens winner - Elisa Houdry (ABAC)

Overall Winner - Raul Penso (DHL Express)

Winning Team - Spälti

And we are please to announce two brand new titles. For the first time ever the PWCA has two
American Champions

PWCA Paragliding Overall American Champion - RAUL PENSO (DHL Express)

and

PWCA Paragliding Women's American Champion - JOANNA DI-GRIGOLI (Ford Cantv Oakley)

NATIONAL RESULTS

PWCA Paragliding Overall National Results

1st - Italy (10115 points)

2nd - Venezuela (9981 points)

3rd - France (9724 points)

and finally

PWCA American First Nation - Venezuela

PRIZE GIVING PHOTOS

Finally, after two days of hanging around in the rain, we have a task. Its a 37km straight line elapsed time task from Ibituruna to A37 in the south west. The task is shown below - check back here later for the results.

Task winner was Joachim Oberhauser with a time of 1:48

Top female for today is Camila Antonorsi with a distance of 23.63 km.

Todays Task Scores

OVERALL COMPETITION SCORES

The weather is not being kind to us ! 

We awoke to rain and a very overcast sky this morning so the day was cancelled early to allow the pilots to plan alternative activities.

This evening at 1800 there is a meeting to discuss the new rules for 2009 (which will not be much fun) and then at 2000 there is a dinner party for the pilots in a local restaurant (which promises to be much more fun than the meeting...)

In the meantime we thought we would provide some information about the winners of the first two tasks of the 2009 World Cup.

Day 3 is here and the weather is not looking so good this morning. We're going up to the launch but the chances of a task are not looking strong at the moment.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of blogs regarding the competition so far-

From Joanna De Grigoli (Venezuela) in Spanish and English Joanna's Blog;

From Steve Etherington (UK) Steve's Blog

And from Dmitry Korolev (Russia) Dmitry's Blog

UPDATE - 15:00 - March 24th - Task Cancelled due to weather

After a period of studying the weather on take-off it was decided to set an elapsed time task with a distance of 38k. Last start was set for 1.5 hours after the Window Open. However, at 14:00 a development of CumuloNimbus was spotted in the distance and the decision was made to cancel the task. The weather here is still good enough that most pilots are free flying down but it is expected to deteriorate this afternoon.

After storms last night the day started with hot sun on wet ground which made for a cloudy and not very promising day. We still managed to set a task but the conditions failed and most people landed at the 25k mark. Task was won by Davide Licini with a 40km flight.

Top female today was Svetlana Piskareva with a flight of 22.6km.

See todays overall scores here

The Brasilian company Go-Up are here with 22 live SPOT satellite tracking devices - you can follow the progress of these 22 pilots in real time here

After a very nice party with a local band yesterday night, the 2009 World Cup is on !

First task in Brazil : a 70 km race to the south. The conditions are first of all very strong at the start, up to 5-6 m/s. Then, it's a different story. Because of a big area in the shadow at the first turnpoint, there are two options. Half of the pilots are going to the turnpoint directly and ... land ! The other half is going away to the sunny spots where they find very weak thermals. Half of them again are landing !

Almost all pilots have been flying only 15 or 16 km. Only two pilots, each on his way, managed to keep flying. Stefan Wyss is flying 33.4 km. To his surprise, he's discovering that Jean François Chapuis, one of the best french pilots since many years, has been flying 60 km ! All other pilots are amazed !

xm

View online results for task 1

Pictures from Task 1